Pith. sign in

REVIEW 5 cited by

How small were the first cosmological objects?

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv astro-ph/9603007 v2 pith:THKWE3UE submitted 1996-03-04 astro-ph

classification astro-ph
keywords massessolarablebecomeschanneleffectiveformationmass
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

Signed reviews

No signed human review yet.

0 comments
read the original abstract

The minimum mass that a virialized gas cloud must have in order to be able to cool in a Hubble time is computed, using a detailed treatment of the chemistry of molecular hydrogen. With a simple model for halo profiles, we reduce the problem to that of numerically integrating a system of chemical equations. The results agree well with numerically expensive 3D simulations, and our approach has the advantage of rapidly being able to explore large regions of parameter space. The minimum baryonic mass M_b is found to be strongly redshift dependent, dropping from 10^6 solar masses at z=15 to 5000 solar masses at z=100 as molecular cooling becomes effective. For z>>100, M_b rises again, as CMB photons inhibit H_2-formation through the H^- channel. Finally, for z>>200, the H_2^+ channel for H_2-formation becomes effective, driving M_b down towards 10^3 solar masses. With a standard CDM power spectrum with sigma_8=0.7, this implies that a fraction 10^{-3} of all baryons may have formed luminous objects by z=30, which could be sufficient to reheat the universe.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. 21cmEMUv3: a hybrid diffusion-LSTM emulator of 21cmFAST summary observables

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    21cmEMUv3 emulates the cylindrical 21cm power spectrum via score-based diffusion and six other 21cmFAST observables via LSTM networks at sub-percent accuracy, then uses the emulator to infer a lower limit on soft-band...

  2. 21 cm Cosmology Sensitivity to Small-Scale Structure: Warm vs Neutrino-Interacting Dark Matter

    astro-ph.CO 2025-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    21 cm forecasts show HERA can detect νDM interactions down to ~3×10⁻³⁵ cm² (assuming zero modelling error) but cannot distinguish νDM from warm dark matter.

  3. Direct Collapse Black Hole Candidates from Decaying Dark Matter

    hep-ph 2025-09 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Axion dark matter decay injects 1-13.6 eV photons that suppress H2, enabling atomic cooling halos and direct collapse black hole seeds for axion masses 24.5-26.5 eV and couplings down to 4e-12/GeV.

  4. JWST Absorption-Line Analysis of UV-Bright Galaxies at $z=7.2-10.6$: Early Chemical Enrichment Traced by C, O, Mg, Al, Si, and Fe

    astro-ph.GA 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    JWST spectra reveal that two z~7 galaxies already show near-solar iron-to-silicon ratios with no strong odd-even effect, favoring early Type Ia supernovae over pair-instability supernovae as the source of iron enrichment.

  5. Ultraviolet diversity of Little Red Dots as a probe for direct-collapse black hole ages

    astro-ph.GA 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations predict that UV diversity in Little Red Dots encodes direct-collapse black hole ages via a rapid transition from BH- to stellar-dominated emission after ~30 Myr.

Pith tools